Conclusions

The Product Manager’s job

For a Product Manager to be successful, he must:

1. Understand the concept of Product Category.
2. Know precisely to which Product Category his product belongs.
3. Be able to sketch the Evolutionary Path of the Product Category to which his product belongs.
4. Know where the Product Category (not his product) sits currently on that Evolutionary Path.
5. Articulate, to the satisfaction of others, how close to (or on) that Evolutionary Path his product sits today.

The correct course

The correct course through the three stages, Embryonic, Immature and Mature necessitates making two significant course corrections during the evolution of your Product Category. Each involves a lessening of feature additions to the subsequent product model or version.

Products want to flip

Products will pull towards feature rich or towards high quality.

What does this mean? Unmanaged, product development efforts around a product in an evolving Product Category will, largely based on its cultural environment, slide towards either the Function axis or the *Ability axis described in this book. It is a pivotal challenge of product management to keep those seemingly contradictory forces in the appropriate balance for the stage of evolution of the Product Category.

Many companies, after initial v1/v2 success and having scooped up some great early customer victories, swing to the horizontal to protect what they have achieved in the mistaken belief that the product feature set will somehow take care of itself.

Other companies fall in love with the notion that the more features there are, the better, and they pile on the features until the product collapses under its own weight.

Watershed at the water cooler

Before I had children, managing people in the office was easy. Hire, fire, praise or criticize, it was all in a day’s work. Then one day a few years ago, I was in a discussion in the office where a female colleague was being described. Nothing offensive was said, but a question occurred to me: How would I feel if people in an office 10 years from now were to discuss my daughter in this way? It was a memorable moment for me, and I decided there and then to ask myself the same question every time I am faced with a similar situation in the future. Don’t misunderstand me; I still often get it wrong, and I remain far from perfect. But I have discovered the need to think more about how my actions affect others.

However you decide to look at product management in your organization, staying focused on the value your customer receives is the single best way to make a difference in the lives of all those who will touch your product.

In an effort to set up a college fund for ten-year-old son last Saturday, I helped him to get up-and-running as a used book vendor on Amazon.com. To get his fledgling business started, I donated a number of business and other books that have been collecting dust around the house.

To see how it all works, he and I registered about 10 books to begin with, and we put most of them up at a low price. If anything moves, we will register more books.

Not surprisingly, the first book sold a few hours later. A woman in Ohio by the name of Kristi bought a copy of The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain[1]. I looked at the email containing the order details and in my head I drew a picture of Kristi, my son’s very first customer.

Twenty-nine years of working for customers has taught me to respect every one I am given the privilege to serve. Most likely, Kristi has worked hard for the dollars she put into my son’s hands. With that money comes a big responsibility: to provide service for pay. If there is one thing I want my son to learn from this Amazon.com Merchant experience, it is this: How to serve others.

ë How one serves others is a true measure of character.

In the roller coaster of corporate life, whatever else you do, keep an eye on The Main Thing: serve your customers and colleagues as you want others to serve your own loved ones. You will never meet or hear from many of your customers, but each one of them deserves your utmost respect and consideration.

With every hammer blow on the chisel as you sculpt that great product of yours out of stone, imagine your children using it. It will make all the difference in the world.

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[1] The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards. A great book. If you think you can’t learn how to draw, that book might change your mind.